


Wrench My Heart Out (And Bolt It Back In)

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, but still manage to endear themselves to one another its a miracle yall, lowkey a good portion of this is rey's internal gay-monologue ngl, theyre both real bad at flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-15 11:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: The fight will always continue, which, for them, means life is a matter of how you use the time in between.





	Wrench My Heart Out (And Bolt It Back In)

**Author's Note:**

> i had. a lot of pent up sw feelings after seeing tlj and it all manifested into my new and fierce love of space gfs rey and rose.
> 
> also i've been writing fic for nearly 4 years now and somehow this is the first time i've ever written anything for sw so, just a heads up ig??
> 
> also also: heads up that idk if the force really works like that but in this instance, frankly, i. dont care jgksjfkd

Rey examines the oddly shaped part in Finn's hands. She can't help but apply the market knowledge she'd picked up on Jakku to it, detailing its parts and converting them to credits. The in-place screws and unbent prongs are major plusses, but the rust and slight denting are downfalls - it wouldn't be too hard to hawk, not when spare parts are to be considered, but it wouldn't fetch the heftiest of prices.

"This is hot off an X-Wing and Rose needs it ASAP, but I don't have time to go down there - can you take it to her for me?" he asks, holding the part against its chest.

She reevaluates it - this is obviously something important, even with the cosmetic issues the price could be argued up.

"Rey?"

She blinks twice, finally looking up to his face. "Yeah, I can do that," she agrees, trying to shake the prices floating in her head.

"Thank you so much," he says as he shuffles the part into her hands. 

"I know, I'm a lifesaver," she replies, a smirk to her tone.

He grins. "That you are."

"Finn!" a voice comes from across the bustling room.

He ducks his head out of what seems to be habit. Under his breath, he looses a curse. "I've really gotta go - but you'll get that to her?" he asks, already backing away.

She shooes with her free hand. "Yes! Now _go_."

He turns on his heel and bustles off, the flowy fabric of his shirt trailing behind him.

She rolls her eyes, turning to head in the opposite direction.

Finding her way to the garage isn't as hard as navigating the rest of the Resistance's newest base. She only makes one wrong turn - which she counts as a win, especially when she steps foot into the openess of the garage in what can be considered a timely fashion.

A few people straggle around her, pilots getting back from missions, mechanics working on ships or weapons or other unnamed projects, but no one that matches what she's heard about Rose from Finn.

It takes a few suggestions from passersby and a trial and error process of multiple steps before Rey finds who she _thinks_ is Rose - or rather, Rose's bottom half.

The top half, Rey presumes, is under the crumpled mass of metal that stands grandly before her.

"Uh, hello?" she tries, watching as the booted foot of the half-body goes from bouncing out a tune to abrupt stillness.

Wheels skitter across the floor as the legs come hurtling at her, inch by inch revealing another piece to make up the entirety of Rose Tico.

Rose's eyes flick across Rey's face for a split second before she startles. "Oh, oh my gosh, hi," she stumbles, pushing herself to her feet as she tries to discreetly brush a smudge of soot or oil from her round cheek, but only manages to succeed in smearing it further across her skin.

"Hi," Rey repeats, eyes flashing from the woman's work-strewn hair to her messy coveralls tied off around her waist to the sleeveless shirt she wears that exposes curving arms dotted with stray freckles that Rey wants to trace.

She feels a buzz in her fingers that arcs up into her palms, and a sudden lurch in her stomach.

Rose brushes her hands off on her hips, not that it does much good, and lets them rest there. She turns a small smile made of bow lips and pink cheeks and a slight dimple on Rey, and Rey nearly forgets why she's there.

"Is that my part?" Rose finally asks after a quiet second, pointing at the object in question.

Rey looks down at her arms before back to the woman in front of her. It takes a moment for it to register both what she's been asked and what the correlation of the object is.

"Yes!" she yelps. "Right, sorry. I- sorry," she mumbles, extending it toward the other woman.

Rose takes it gratefully, her lips pulling taughter. "Thanks, I've been waiting on this thing for what feels like forever," she explains with a small laugh. 

Rey nods numbly, eyes bouncing from the necklace around Rose's throat to the twinkle in her eyes to the way she holds the hunk of metal tenderly.

For Force sake, what is _wrong_ with her?

"What is it?" Rey asks, trying to distract herself from the buzzing in her hands, which she clenches and unclenches once.

"Hopefully a conductor that'll power that," she says, pointing at another odd looking piece of metal, " Which, in turn, will help me repair that," she adds, pointing to the metal which amounts to being a sculpture in terms of functionality.

"And that is?" Rey asks, motioning toward the large thing.

"Well," Rose says, pulling at the inside of her cheek with her teeth. "It _was_ an incredibly powerful generator. Got torn up in our last scuffle, and the General asked me to expedite fixing it so we can get it back into commission."

She scratches at the back of her neck, face scrunching up ruefully. "Not sure how well that's going to work, given I've got a dented conductor, an energy-less power source, and a generator's shell, but I'll figure it out."

"Do you need help?" Rey asks. She doesn't know what possessed her to ask it, but it's out there now, between them.

Rose grins, and Rey feels a hiccup in her heartbeat. "That'd be awesome," she replies.

* * *

"I'm just worried that I won't be able to work the dent out," Rose explains some time later. "Which means they sent Jess out for nothing."

Rey lets that thought bounce around in her mind for a second. She tugs at her lip with her teeth, concentrating on the socket wrench in front of her crossed legs, absently lifting it a few centimeters as she plays with her hands in her lap. 

Rose eyes her laudable concentration with a secret smile, her eyebrows pinched in amusement. 

"Do you have a photo of what it's supposed to look like? A blueprint?" Rey asks after another moment, letting the tool rest back on the workbench where she's perched herself.

"What're you thinking?" Rose asks, but obliges, crouching to rifle through one of the bench's squeaky drawers.

She tucks the print under her arm and clears as much of the workspace as she can before rolling it out in front of Rey. 

She points out key features, explaining to a listening Rey what the issues are with the part she has and what it's supposed to be.

Rey's thankful she learned how to multitask in her youth, and thus has had plenty of years to master the practice. It means not only does she inhale all the knowledge that Rose gives so willingly and without question, but it also means she can observe the light that sparks in the other woman's eyes as she begins getting deeper into the inner workings of the part.

Finally, after she's explained everything she can, she looks up at Rey - who has rested her cheek in her hand for a more comfortable position to listen - and flushes immediately. "I'm sorry that was probably way more than what you needed-"

Rey looses a wide grin at her. "It was perfect," she says, and she hopes the unspoken words she can barely bring herself to think are vivid enough where they lie under those that have been spoken.

Rey's delighted to see the flush creep farther up Rose's cheeks. "So, do you need anything else?" she asks.

"Give me ten minutes and if anyone asks, it's for the greater good of the Resistance," she jokes, her smile softening. "But seriously, do you have some metal you could part with?"

Rose nods, a wave of something - relief, maybe - passing across her features as she heads farther into the garage. "How much?" she calls over her shoulder. 

Rey knocks her head back and forth, considering. "About this big?" she says, holding her hands up to the appropriate size.

Rose stops to spare a glance backward. Her eyes narrow, mentally assessing the spares she has, before she finally continues moving.

There's a crash, an impressive string of curses that, oddly enough, make Rey's heart flutter, and then Rose reappears holding the perfect piece of metal. There's blood staining her undershirt from where he hand is cradled against her chest, but she barely seems to register it.

She passes off the metal to Rey with a, "Careful for the edges," before she pulls open yet another squeaking drawer. She snatches up a wad of some sort of fluffy material, jams it over her weeping wound, and unleashes a roll of tape like what's used for wiring, and fastens the wad to her skin like that.

"Shouldn't you go to the med bay for that?" Rey asks with a raised brow. 

Rose looks up from where she's steady twining tape around her finger. "This? Nah, the doctors and I made a deal that unless the blood's shooting from my body I can take care of it myself."

Rey's eyes widened a fraction of an inch. "That sounds like a story with precedent."

Rose beams. "Oh, definitely. One time my sister and I were working on her X-Wing, routine repairs, and a screw went right through my thumb. Paige was never the greatest with blood, so she almost passed out. I was practically carrying _her_ to the med bay because I insisted I was fine, but she insisted I was not. I ended up with stitches, a cool scar, and a sister who could never look at a screw the same way again," she explains through barely repressed laughter, finally letting a nose-scrunching, eye-closing snort release from her chest at the memory. Her hand comes up to the necklace tied off around her throat as she finally settles down, something bittersweet tugging at the line of her lips.

Rey had heard about Paige Tico's noble sacrifice. First from Finn, then from Poe himself, then from the other remaining pilots. 

She isn't sure what that was like, losing a sibling. She doesn't even know if she has _parents_ let alone a sibling. But she knows loss - if she knows anything.

"She sounds amazing," Rey says with a soft smile, resting a hand on Rose's shoulder. "Do you have anymore stories?"

Rose nods. "Tons, but you don't want to hear all that," she says, batting Rey's words away as her eyes well. 

Rey's face scrunches as she looks over Rose's own expression. Finally, it dawns on her. "Oh, I'm- I'm sorry to have upset you."

"No! No, you didn't, it's just," she scrubs her hands over her eyes. "I'm pretty bad at wooing people, but I think crying about my dead sister is at least fourth date material," she jokes, lips pressed tightly together. "Geez, I'm sorry, this is- this is going all wrong."

Rey blinks once, twice, three times for good measure. "Wooing people?" she asks.

Rose looks up, scrubbing at her eyes. "Yeah, you know. Woo-" her cheeks pink. "Kriff. I said that out loud."

"I-"

"There you are!" Finn's unmistakable voice calls. "We've been looking all over for you, General Organa's looking for you," he says to Rey, hands lightly on his hips. "Something about Skywalker,." "Hey, Rose," he adds, giving her a bright smile.

"Hey," she says, beaming back in an attempt to cover her wobbling lips. 

"Oh. All right," Rey says, hopping down from her perch. She turns back to face Rose. "Can I hold on to this? I'll bring it back, I swear."

Rose nods, shoving her hands deep in her pockets. "Yeah! Yeah, of course." 

"I'll see you again soon," Rey promises. And before she can think better of it, she ducks to plant a small kiss to Rose's cheek before scampering off to meet with the General.

Finn raises an eyebrow at Rose.

"Shut up," she murmurs, cheeks flaming red, fingers to the patch of skin where Rey's lips touched. 

"I didn't say anything," he argued.

"You didn't have to."

\----- Five Days Later -----

Rey hadn't made good on her promise to Rose yet, and it was starting to sit uncomfortably in her stomach. 

Realistically, she knew they'd only spent a day together, and thus they didn't have any obligation to one another, but something about the other woman seemed to settle the ever-raging fire in Rey's mind.

She'd felt…at peace, for the first time in a long time. And she wanted more of that- she wanted more time with Rose. She wanted to sit on her squeaky workbench and watch her work, wanted to listen to her ramble about parts and machines and old stories laced with love.

Rey wanted to learn the pattern of the freckles on her arms and wanted to map the curve of her lips and wanted to hold her hand. She wanted to learn where she came from and what her favorite food was and wanted to make her laugh and make her blush and comfort her when she cried.

It had only been a day, but it had been an amazing day, and Rey wanted, most importantly, to know if it could turn into an amazing life.

But even for her that seemed like rushing things a bit. She should probably work towards not making her cry when they were together and a few more conversations before she started planning eternity.

Which was why she found herself sitting on the bunk of the only person she knew who had a semi-normal and decent relationship.

"Hey! What's up?" Poe grins, wiping grease from his hands on an old, already messy rag.

It's not that she didn't trust Finn, he was, after all, the other half of said normal/decent relationship, it was just that he was too close to Rose. She and Poe were friends, but still distanced enough that Rey didn't feel mortal embarrassment about bringing this up with him.

"I need your help- well, advice, I guess," she explains, wringing her fingers where they rest in her lap, but keeping a firm gaze on him.

"All right," he says, taking a seat beside her. "What's got you all worked up?"

"What do you do if someone's trying to woo you?" she blurts before he can even get settled.

"Who's trying to _woo_ you?" he cries in retaliation.

"Rose! Maybe! I'm not sure- we were having fun, but then there was blood and I made her cry and then _Finn_ showed up, but I did kiss her, so I guess-"

"There was blood? And crying? And _kissing_?"

She nods.

He buries his face in his grease-stained hands. "Walk me through this," comes his muffled repsonse.

So she does.

She tries to omit her own personal asides when it comes to Rose - tries to stick to the facts like it's a mission debriefing - but by the time she's done she thinks more has come out than she's meant to let slip.

Poe gives her one small nod before saying, "You've got it bad."

"No shit!" she groans, rubbing ferociously at her face. "What do I do?"

"You could just ask her to have dinner with you," he supplies gently, knocking their shoulders together. "It sounds like you're both already on the precipice, anyway, just a matter of time before one of you cracks."

"It's that easy?" she asks dubiously. "I thought this whole courting this was supposed to be hard. You and Finn-"

"Are idiots," he says with a simple shrug. "We probably aren't the best example for you to follow. And pro tip? You can just call it dating."

She groans again, this time more frustrated than anything, letting herself fall back the rest of the way and her hands come up to cover her eyes.

He gives her a few pouting moments before asking, "Something else bothering you?"

She bites her lip, weighing her options. In the end, she knows she can trust Poe.

"Sometimes it feels like I never got off Jakku. I feel like some part of me is, is _trapped_ there somehow. And always will be."

"Wha'd'you mean?"

"I don't understand any of this. You and Finn taught me about friendship, about family, and I'm so grateful for that, but there's still so much I don't understand. 

"There are still some days where I can't hold a conversation. Or I can, but I can't read the other person, and I just ruin it. And a lot of the time, I'm diverting half my mind to tallying what an item would go for if I could hawk it, how many creds I could get, how it would transfer to food. And food! People share their meals so freely, let others sit close by and bump elbows and swipe a piece or two. The way I grew up, food was a prize for the best adapted, and I guess in my mind it still is, even though I truly know ot isn't.

"I don't understand people or all these unspoken laws and unwritten langauges everyone else seems to know and it's overwhelming and it's scary and what if I-I," she stops, tears pushing at her lids. "What if I never figure it out?" she finally hisses, angry at herself for the betraying tears.

Poe exhales gently, leaning back to lie beside her. "Hey, hey," he soothes as she snuffles harshly against herself. "It's all right."

"But it's not," she replies immediately.

"No one has this whole life thing figured out, all right? Every person has their strong suits, and they're all different from one another. Some people have to work harder at things that are easy to others - that's just how it goes. So, yeah, maybe you don't get body language, and maybe social cues aren't something you fully grasp, but you've got the good stuff.

"You've got love and compassion and understanding and kindess and strength. Most of us just picked all this stuff up out of habit, but you worked for what you've got, which makes it all the more better. You'll pick the rest of it up, too. It takes time, Rey - you just happen to be on a different schedule, is all."

She pushes out a small sigh, her eyes falling shut. He continues.

"And you're trying, which is a lot more than can be said for most people, y'know? So if this is what's holding you back from Rose, don't let it have that power. Take things slow, as slow as you need to, and maybe you'll come out the other side with a new connection."

"I'll never know if I don't try?" she finally pipes up.

"Exactly. See, you're a fast learner," he says, and she can hear him cracking a grin.

\----- Two Days Later -----

Rey took what Poe said to heart. Really. She'd given herself time to mull it all over, but eventually, the pieces began falling into place and she saw he was almost scarily right.

So, in the spirit of his little speech, she'd decided to take things slow.

Which, apparently, meant not returning to the garage or Rose's presence for a full seven days after the original fact.

But, keeping with the ever-present multitasking theme in Rey's life, she'd been putting her free time to good use.

The metal bends under her fingers, just as it had been doing for the past 48 hours. It had started as an idea, just an inkling, but after her talk with Poe, it was more important for her to finish it than anything had been in a long time.

"You're all set, everything going to plan here?" Finn asks, entering the room after a light knock at her doorframe.

A trickle of sweat beads down Rey's temple. "Almost," she says.

In her mind, she imagines prongs and screws and undented metal, letting it flow into the buttery material below her fingertips. Blueprints call to mind, and she lets those jump in to, accompanied by the excited cadence of Rose's voice.

"Done," she calls, stretching her hand out to rid it of the oncoming cramp. 

"Then get to it! Contrary to popular belief she doesn't _live_ in the garage," he says, ushering her out of the room before she can even get to her feet.

"Easy, easy!" she chastises, clutching the gift to her chest. "I didn't spend forever on this for you do dent it all back up."

"No, you spent forever on it because you won't be out wooed."

"You're a menace."

He beams at her then. "Just go get your girl."

Petulantly, she sticks her tongue out at him before scampering out of the room to go find Rose. His laugh, loud and boisterous and _happy_ follows her down the hall.

Her heart swells with hope.

They're eerily similar. Rey's known that since the day she met him; supposed orphans who had their choices ripped from their grasps at a young age and still, even now, felt the trickle down of that no matter how much space was put between them and the places that ravaged them.

But here he is. Happy, so happy, with friends, with a partner - with a family. One that loves him so fiercely. 

She'd never thought she'd have anything like that. She never thought she'd get to be a part of it for someone else. She never thought she'd get to explore romantic pursuits and what that world had to offer.

She never thought she'd get a lot of things, but the people of the Resistance seem more than happy to oblige her in all other aspects - she finds herself hoping against hope as she waits for the elevator to deliver her to the garage that her luck will extend just a bit farther.

When the doors slide open, the first thing she notices is the deathly quiet. For a split second, she wonders if she's missed something - an attack, a meeting, anything.

But then she hears metal upon metal coming from her left, and she takes a moment to breath.

 _Just a slow day,_ she assures herself.

She finds Rose atop her workbench, legs hung over the side, gleaming metal in her lap, a frown to her lips and a hammer in her hand.

Fruitful curses fall from the peaks of her lips as she whacks at the metal with the hammer.

"Hey," Rey calls softly, rocking on the balls of her feet. She feels bile rising in her chest, but she stamps it down quicker than a flash.

Rose's eyes lag behind the swivel of her head, finally catching up and wavering on Rey's features for a moment.

"Hey," she replies softly, nowhere near the enthusiasm from the week before.

Shit.

They sit in awkward silence, long enough that Rey becomes heartily acquainted with the steady thump, thump, thumping of her heartbeat in her ears, and the sweat on her palms.

"I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to come back," she begins warily, trying to watch the other woman's body for any cues. 

There are a few words that Rey knows in the language of limbs and head tilts - they're all harsh, angry things, worse than curses, but they're the ones she learned quickly to fear.

But none of them come. Rose's shoulders sag and she finally deposits her items to her side. "It's all right. We've all got things to do, yeah?" she tries to joke, but there's no punch to it - it's neither a joke nor an accusation, just something muddling around in the middleground.

"I wanted you to know I'm someone who keeps her promises. It may take a while, but…" she trails off, finally raising her hands into Rose's line of sight.

The woman's eyes track each part, each opening and curve and edge and face.

"That's my part," she says softly, a smile working its way onto her face. "How'd you get that? There's only three in this system and the other two are way out of range for our pilots-

"I can just pop the dented part off and replace it, it'll work perfect now! How did you-" suddenly she starts in on a tangent as she relieves the piece from Rey's careful grasp, trying to guess how Rey might have procured a perfect replacement for the only damaged piece to her conductor. She contradicts herself, but rights it out as soon as she realizes, which sets her off down a whole new path in search for an answer.

Her face is starting to get red and her hands are flying faster than hyperspeed and Rey doesn't know what to do so she says the first thing that comes to mind.

"Do you want to have dinner?" she blurts. "With me," she adds, as if clarification is needed.

Rose stops, her cheeks inflating outward before she blows a long breath out. "What?

 _Go as slow as you need to,_ Poe's voice chimes in the back of Rey's mind.

Rose's eyes flick across Rey's face - searching.

Rey startles when she realizes what it is Rose is looking for.

The punchline, the laughter, the other shoe dropping. 

But really, how can she be surprised? Isn't that what she waits for every time she's invited to join in something, whether it be as casual as training or a meal? Isn't that trepidation bred in her blood and pumped through her body with every beat of her heart?

That's the moment she realizes - or maybe she had realized, but it took that moment for her to uncover the found truth - Rose and her, they're not all that different. Rose is bubbly, but she's just as scarred and lost as Rey is. She dives into mechanics like Rey falls into old Jakku-patterns of bargaining.

They're so different, but they're so close and it hits Rey like a breath of fresh air that there's no reason to be _scared_ of this - this attraction she feels, these feelings that are worming their way into her heart.

"I've been trying to figure out how to ask you, that's why I stayed away for so long," Rey admits with the smallest of smiles. "But," she begins, letting it widen across her cheeks. "a mildly-wise friend gave me some pretty good advice I couldn't pass up."

Rose finally lets her own smile bloom. Slight at first, before it held up her entire face.

"I thought I'd scared you off with the mechanical rambling and the poor jokes," she admits after a heaving sigh, hands migrating to her hips, lips twitching nervous.

Rey laughs then. "No, I enjoyed that. It was probably my second favorite part."

"Second?" Rose asks.

"The view was probably number one," Rey replies easily, nothing sheepish or embarrassed or afraid in her tone. She wants this - she wants this and so much more and she isn't going to let anyone, anything, take that from her, not Jakku, not the First Order, not even herself.

Rose's cheeks flush brilliantly, two jewels affixed to the face of a woman made of rusty, but still working parts, and pure _light_ , and Rey's heart constricts.

"I don't even have anything clever to respond with, but I might be able to come up with something on the walk to the mess hall," she says, shoving her hands in her pockets and shrugging halfheartedly.

She looks incredibly young then, and incredibly earnest, and Rey can only feel herself charging headfirst into whatever this is as she extends a hand to Rose.

"Then I'll have to stick close in case you do."

"Yeah," Rose says, taking her hand. "You will."

She pulls a grinning Rey toward the elevator and their laughter resides like a third passenger as they travel up, up, up.

**Author's Note:**

> finn: hey can you do this simple thing for me  
> rey, coming back from simple thing: i just met the love of my life and also i'm having an existential crisis  
> finn: WHAT
> 
> hmu on tumblr @luluthelich !


End file.
